Proms Saturday Matinee 3 ( 11.8.12): Britten Sinfonia

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks to the Finnissy devotees on here for putting a strong case on his behalf. I have to say, his music probably represents, for me - an old-fashioned Schoenbergian - a point beyond which I find myself lost. I did give the English Country Tunes broadcast of a year or two ago a go, but felt swamped by the amount of detail, which reminded me of Sorabji. In Ferneyhough the detail always seems somehow justified by the richness of perceivable interrelationships graspable by me on an initial hearing, and the sheer melodic inventiveness, and I'm just glad, despite my comments, that there are some who have not given up on the modernist visions unleashed by Boulez and others in the 1940s-70s, implying as they do some hope in a future, rather than resorting to a rose-tinted past.

So for me the Brian Elias piece so far not mentioned here summed up just about where my challenges most happily lie when listening to new music, though I found the Birtwistle highly satisfying, having wondered if his techniques would transfer over to the black and white. However independent from one-another his furnishing materials are, they always seem to keep sufficiently out of each others way to allow the listener to follow the different levels without fear of missing details; and there is some subtle connection with more popular vernaculars without giving way to emulation. I often wonder, given the strong rhythmic momentum to so much of his music, if Birtwistle has ever considered composing for jazz or improvising ensembles.

[edashtav]

So for me the Brian Elias piece so far not mentioned here summed up just about where my challenges most happily lie when listening to new music, though I found the Birtwistle highly satisfying, having wondered if his techniques would transfer over to the black and white. However independent from one-another his furnishing materials are, they always seem to keep sufficiently out of each others way to allow the listener to follow the different levels without fear of missing details; and there is some subtle connection with more popular vernaculars without giving way to emulation. I often wonder, given the strong rhythmic momentum to so much of his music, if Birtwistle has ever considered composing for jazz or improvising ensembles.

That's an interesting point that you make about Birtwistle + Jazz. Didn't he have connections to that world in his early clarinet-playing days?

[heliocentric]

In Ferneyhough the detail always seems somehow justified by the richness of perceivable interrelationships graspable by me on an initial hearing, and the sheer melodic inventiveness, and I'm just glad, despite my comments, that there are some who have not given up on the modernist visions unleashed by Boulez and others in the 1940s-70s, implying as they do some hope in a future, rather than resorting to a rose-tinted past.

Finnissy and Ferneyhough of course always used to be bracketed together, although that happens less often now as it's become clear (though not to everyone, unfortunately) that the shared surface feature of "complexity" doesn't really imply any deeper kinship, as you say. For me what makes Finnissy's music (especially from the period around the piece under discussion) more engaging than Ferneyhough's is precisely that it goes beyond the kind of dialectical/discursive relationships that you mention, and also takes a much more (to my mind) imaginative view of structure, for example in the role taken by the "orchestra" in the Second Concerto, or the juxtaposition of extremes of density and sparseness, and extremes of expressive intensity and physicality, in many of his other compositions, as compared to Ferneyhough's concern for a traditional sense of formal balance (with some exceptions, also from the 1970s). It's a question of temperament and timing, I dare say. When I first heard Ferneyhough's music I found it fascinating and still do, but when I first heard Finnissy (both were around 1980) it changed the way I thought about music in a much more fundamental way.

It might be worth mentioning that Finnissy's music, to a greater extent than most other composers', has been informed from an early stage by experimental film and dance - the early Songs 1-18 were an explicit tribute to the abstract films of Stan Brakhage, and many of his earlier piano pieces were conceived to accompany dance performances. Anyway I'll stop rambling on: I was very pleased to see this piece being programmed, and performed so well, and I'm off to listen to it again now.

[Serial_Apologist]

Finnissy and Ferneyhough of course always used to be bracketed together, although that happens less often now as it's become clear (though not to everyone, unfortunately) that the shared surface feature of "complexity" doesn't really imply any deeper kinship, as you say. For me what makes Finnissy's music (especially from the period around the piece under discussion) more engaging than Ferneyhough's is precisely that it goes beyond the kind of dialectical/discursive relationships that you mention, and also takes a much more (to my mind) imaginative view of structure, for example in the role taken by the "orchestra" in the Second Concerto, or the juxtaposition of extremes of density and sparseness, and extremes of expressive intensity and physicality, in many of his other compositions, as compared to Ferneyhough's concern for a traditional sense of formal balance (with some exceptions, also from the 1970s). It's a question of temperament and timing, I dare say. When I first heard Ferneyhough's music I found it fascinating and still do, but when I first heard Finnissy (both were around 1980) it changed the way I thought about music in a much more fundamental way.

It might be worth mentioning that Finnissy's music, to a greater extent than most other composers', has been informed from an early stage by experimental film and dance - the early Songs 1-18 were an explicit tribute to the abstract films of Stan Brakhage, and many of his earlier piano pieces were conceived to accompany dance performances. Anyway I'll stop rambling on: I was very pleased to see this piece being programmed, and performed so well, and I'm off to listen to it again now.

Thanks, helio - sounds like a good idea!

[heliocentric]

Thanks, helio - sounds like a good idea!

For me to stop rambling on - yes you're right. But: encouraged by JohnSkelton's comments, I had a listen afterwards to Finnissy's Second and Third String Quartets. I take the point about the birdsong in the Third, but I think I find what the string quartet itself does in the Second more attractive; for me the slow neoromantic-sounding stretches in the Third get a bit much, I get the feeling (as in a lot of History of Photography in Sound that there's a complex play of references to other musics that I'm not getting, and that as a result I'm missing something important.

[bluestateprommer]

Just some quick general impressions, as I'm still several days behind on Proms and am trying gamely to catch up, with this Cadogan Hall PSM being another one that I caught just before the deadline. Excellent concert, sterling work from all artists concerned. To paraphrase one introduction that I remember from a past PSM that I actually attended in person:

"4 composers, all of them living, 3 of them here"

It was also nice to hear Brian Elias in a brief interview chat, as he's pretty much just a name to me, on this side of the pond (probably that would be the case pretty much all over the USA). It just goes to show what treasure the Cadogan Hall Proms are, in both contemporary works and more standard chamber repertoire, even though of course the "promming" aspect is absent.